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Organizational skills for a hunter are crucial. Without them, a hunter will fall into the trap of putting their vigil ahead of their own lives, and when part of an organization they become experts they need to become even better at organizing their skills to aid their fellow hunters. As a hunter cell grows, expands, sees the wider world and the truths behind it, they start rubbing up against other organizations that might go against their goals. Organizations with better organizers and resources than they might have. Being at the top of the heap for a cell, compact, or even a conspiracy, is a constant stream of calls for aid, resoures, and God forbid, funeral arrangements. At the level of a leader in a conspiracy, it's easy enough to distance yourself from the day-to-day squabbles of the ground leve cells, that's why there's numerous middle men and cell leaders. The quasi-leaderships of compacts are a little closer, considering they have a closer relation to the cells they interact with and have to help save. They understand that there is a desperate need for their cells to be supplied, but the balance of personal interactions with their brother cell leaders is countered by the reality that they have little actual control over their cells and almost no authority on how the resources are used. Lone cells have to play the hardest game, seeing as their resources are often the least among the other two tiers. They can only provide for and supply themselves with little help from the outside. How can you represent this struggle in game terms? Let's create a hypothetical city, Franklin City. It's a rust-belt town slowly pulling itself back up, and you control three cells in a loose compact that has a cell in each of the city's three neighborhoods; the North, the genrtified and suburban areas; the Southwest, home of the worn factories and tenaments; the East, the target of the majority of the city's efforts in cleaning things up. City hall is smack in the middle of these areas, along with the city's largest hospital. The college is in the East, hence the massive effort for cleaning things up. Parents don't want to pay for their kids getting shot and pumped full of drugs. Along with you compact, you know there's at least a few small independent cells running around. Gangs run in the Southwest side, and organized crime is a pittance but present. In the past few weeks, two things have happened. The first is that a werewolf pack has rolled into the city, killing around the factories in the Southwest. The second is that a larger, more militant group has moved in chasing said werewolves. Your little city's set to become a battleground. Time to strategize. You know you have three cells in three neighborhoods. You need weapons, guns, and people to help you in this fight. Where do you get them from? Well, let's presume your compact has the public face of a community organization. People with money always like to keep up appearances, so you hold a public fundraiser to get money from the residents of the North neighborhood. The roll would presumably be an extended Manipulation+Socialize, with any presumable equipment and personnel bonuses and the presumable negatives that would arise from ST intervention. In this scenario, your compact probably walked away with enough to afford some new weapons and enough ammo and medical supplies to last for three months. Now that you have your money, you need to look over the city. The East side is quiet, no one really considers it a major area. You tell the cell there to keep things locked down and wait for a call for help. The cell in the North has the most experience with the rich and slightly more powerful than most, so you tell them to watch the upper classes and make sure no one tries to steal them away for money. Now your cell in the Southwest. Both the wolves and the new compact are moving through there, as police presance is minimal and the spiritual situation is, shockingly, in dire straights. ---------------------------- CELLS At their lowest level, hunter cells are just a small group of anywhere from two to twenty people, the mean usually five or six per cell. These cells are suited to carrying out fighting lone monsters or similarly numbered groups of creatures, but also tend to suffer the most casualties and spend the most time trying to replace them. Lone cells often don't have the security to pick and choose who their allies will be, and often take longer to initiate new members. This also hampers their operations monetarily, since a small group of people working a 9-5, if they have jobs at all, often has their own expenses to worry about and can't always afford to be laid out in a hospital not working. Their advantages are in their speed, their knowledge of one another, and their often secure knowledge of the local area. They can move quickly to stamp out trouble, count on their cellmates to protect them and alert them to possible mind control, and know parts of the area that monsters might not. Unless they have access to a relic or magical tomes, there is little a cell can do to find their own supernatural powers, but many cells balk at this anyway, fearful of the possible corrupting influences present in these methods. Usually a cell will utilize this knowledge only when the need is greatest, and try their best to only use it when the danger is greatest again. Organizationally, you're better off trying to find organization from a Cub Scout pack. Lone cells are free to pick and choose their own organization and ideaology, and sometimes a hot-headed cellmate might wind up dragging his fellow hunters into a situation they're ill-prepared for. They know little about the monsters they hunt, and often survive by trial and error, learning by the seat of their pants hoping the "vampire" is actually compelled to count salt as the cell moves in to burn it. COMPACTS Compacts consist of anywhere from two to five cells, attempting to loosely work in concert with one another over a wide georgraphical area, but often without a hierarchy giving orders that allows cells to make their own decisions. They usually number anywhere from thirty to two hundred hunters, with larger groups spread widely through this area. Compacts are often find themselves opposing larger scales of monstrous activities, whether fighting the political machinations of the leader of the area's vampires, or halting the zoning plan that would unleash the hidden crytpid from it's slumber. Compacts still suffer casualties, but often have a loose method of vetting new recruits and a small pool to choose from for replacements. Many compacts have a communal pool to draw from for any expenses related to the vigil, but don't expect them to just throw money to get the lost writings of Baltia because it's a "hunch". Instead, these funds tend to go towards medical bills, buying ammunition, or paying off a bribe here and there. Compacts can utiilize mystical means, but often possess their own method of support. Though nowhere near as encompasing or obviously powerful as a conspiracy's endowment, the endowment of a compact is often another method of support for the hunter's actions, such as the Long Night's Prayer. Whether or not it's wholly supernatural or just the result of belief is a question for individual hunters, what's important is that it works. Organizationally, compacts are fluid but contained. Two cells might belong to the Union, but where one prefers to protect schools and civic buildings through political and social action, the other fights hard for the local industrial park. This can lead to conflicts within the compact, though these usually resolve themselves before things become too violent. It also means that one cell can do little to convince another to help, as cells often follow their own directives within the compact's broad ideals. Knowledge in a compact is often distributed freely between cells, but this knowledge is often incomplete. Despite this, most compact-affiliated cells know enough about monsters to know that silver nitrate won't do shit against a werewolf, and that a witch is just as vulnerable to gunfire as any street hood. CONSPIRACIES A conspiracy consistes of at least a dozen cells, covering entire nations and affecting the entire world. Hundreds, if not thousands of actual hunters participate in the group's operations, with numerous allies, contacts, informants, resources, and prisoners spread to facilitate operations; many of these people have little to no knowledge of the organization they're actually working for, duped into believing they're working for the government, a religious organization, or some kind of private concern. This makes conspiracies slow to move, as proper channels need to ensure that a report is legitimate, not a trap, false flag, that resources are in place, that cells are ready to move, and that a double check of all these is ensured. This takes time, and time is often of the essence on the vigil, but the penalty for bucking a conspiracy's commands is often harsh depending on the severity of the situation. Also, conspiracies often have various rule or restrictions on their personnel. Task Force: VALYRIE is notorious for leaving their hunters to flounder when a monster is considered a valuable informant or stalking horse for further action, no matter how much death they've visited on the cell's area. Where conspiracies are strongest is their money and support networks for their operatives. With the proper credentials, a conspiracy's cell in London can move to Paris and still find a waiting safehouse, ID cards, and the numbers for the area's informants and sources. Conspiracy endowments are broad and powerful, and many cells will often forgo other mystical weapons knowing that their own tools are more powerful. Conspiracy cells don't get to have their own decisions when they're ordered to solve a problem, but in a way, this eases much of the struggle as a conspiracy cell often can justify their actions as following orders and protecting mankind. Conspiracies also have the largest databases on monsters and other threats, whether it's organized in secret archives hidden in a chapel in Scotland or on dozens of servers across Antartica. It also means that liabilities can be "dealt with" without any word even leaving the conspiracy, and many a nameless body buried in the desert or at sea was just another hunter that knew too much. By now, everyone who's had any experience with hunters should know all this. But think about what this implies. A group of vampires is always looking over at each other, waiting for that final death. Witches are more concerned with themselves than the members of their coven as they try and gain ever greater magical power. The less said about groups of fae, the better off we'll all be. Hunters don't often have to fear that. An established cell at any level knows each other religiously. Some cells become a second family, not just a way to live out a blood-drinking eternity without being alone. It's not unheard of for cellmates to become godfathers and mothers, the recipients of assets after a death, or even marrying a widowed spouse if the unthinkable but grimly expected happens. Hunters in a conspiracy often understand innately that, should they be considered a threat, they will be eliminated, and often share the fear with a grim black comedy shared among their cell. This fellowship at each level is vital to the vigil, since the sheer psychological strain on a hunter needs a release, a way to diffuse. Sharing the experience is one way, but this is still the World of Darkness. These shared sins often coalesce into an insular nature, a shared relization that the cell's committed sins in their actions. Justification takes hold, and here's where the flipside of the three tiers comes into play. Conspiracies are often quick to squash any deviation from the official line. The rules of a conspiracy, byzantine as they are, follow an absolute that the ideals of the group cannot be deviated from. Trying to form your own little sect nestled within is often a good way to earn yourself a 9mm retirement plan. Compacts, being highly decentralized, can do little to stop cells from following their own ideas. Often, a cell-turned-cult will survive for some time before the compact realizes that ties need to be cut. Thankfully, this same decentralized nature often acts as a natural barrier preventing the cult's ideas from spreading. Cells, being insular groups already, can do little once a cult mentality takes hold. Often, the lone objectors are either driven away by pressure or direct violence. Slowly, they draw in others with their philosophy and subversions. Eventually the cell becomes a full-blown cult, and whether it survives or not is up to any other cells, local authorities, or God forbid, monsters in the area. ----------------- When does ripe turn to rotten? On fruit it's obvious. On a compact it's freaking hard to tell the difference. Human organizations are often characterized by their rituals and actions to set them apart from each other. Hunter groups are no different, and often these organizations use rituals and traditions to instill some sense of loyalty and tradition into their members. They really don't start as insular, but over time it gets hard to trust people outside the group when you've seen enough people mind-controlled by witches, turn into shapechangers before your eyes, or become some kind of hybrid between a blender and a Napoleonic-era soldier. This leads some actions to become ritualized or embedded in the fabric of the group. Like the freemasons of the middle ages, these secret words and actions become a method of ensuring trust and denoting rank in a group. If he doesn't know the secret handshake, he's probably not someone you can trust with the location of your group's safehouse. But over time, the meanings of these actions can be lost. People forget that the handshake is a secret passcard and start associating it with magical protection. That good luck charm in the car becomes an effigy of protection against the world. The compact turns more insular over time at this point. They either stop recruiting new members to protect their secrets, or agressively push to gain traction against their foes. The middle ground, the gray area between outright good and blatant evil erodes. The cult slowly retracts itself from what it sees as evil, viewing everything in an "us vs. them" mentality. Sure, there are probably friends of the cult, but these become few and far between as increasingly bizarre and even downright disturbing actions drive the few people that might have been able to stop them from becoming dangerous away. Of course, the cult can't see this as their fault. Only those who are ready can be saved/brought into the fold/be made into something greater than petty mankind. An echo chamber effect on a large scale, the cult believes that the people driven away aren't ready for their salvation, which is to bring people in, which doesn't work because of their rituals which drive people away, and the cult believes that people driven away aren't ready for their salvation...You get the idea. Slowly, they start to distrust authority outside their cult. Police are agents of a cruel and suspicious government. Municipal employees are spies sent to watch them for conformity. Elected leaders want to destroy the world without realizing what they're doing to the path to salvation. Larger religions harbor secrets and ways to destroy the compact, now a new cult. At this point the cult has two options; go underground and stay there until the time is right, or buy a plot of land and try to prepare for the end. The first usually helps them hide a little better except for a massive breach in security, but the second allows the chance to bring their message to a wider world when the time is right. What was seen as a tragedy to thousands during Ruby Ridge and Waco was instead the shining moment for many in these cults, having their teachings proven true by the heavy-handed actions of a government that they never spoke to and considered worse than Pol Pot, Hitler, and '72 Philadelphia Flyers combined. This new insular nature means that the cult finds it easier to justify their actions. The "Us vs Them" mentality the cult holds against the rest of the world means they easily justify their actions, whether it's firebombing a government building or holding a cafe hostage to put the cult's message on the news. Even if they were hunting monsters before, their new transformation has shifted the crosshairs to anyone in their way. Old allies are now dangerous enemies, and anyone with serets on the cult is easily a target for the cult's action. Once a cult gets to this point, there's little chance of going back. The cult's solidified around the ideals of its leaders and dogma, the new bedrock of their lives and justification for every action. The outside world becomes a jungle of shadows, evil, and death. Only the places most familiar to them will offer any refuge, and if they're threatened they will fight to the death.